


The Limitations of Radio

by Not_You



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Canon Queer Character of Color, Deaf Character, Disability, M/M, Night Vale Secret Police, Original Character(s), POV Carlos (sometimes), POV Cecil (sometimes), dream - Freeform, mention of racism and ableism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-11 03:18:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Carlos is Deaf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s high noon as Carlos approaches the Night Vale city limits, and he thought growing up in New Mexico had prepared him for this kind of thing, but apparently not. He pants like a lizard, and finally gives in, reaching over and switching on the air conditioner. He has been avoiding using it with gas as high as it is, but this is ridiculous. He glances over at Kelly, who grins and says, Thank God! the movements of her lips clear and precise from all her time working with Carlos. He smiles back, and says, I had to. A lot of people wouldn’t even understand it, but Kelly is used to him. Carlos’s accent is part of why Kelly is even riding with him. Carlos has been pulled over before, and knows that being a brown-skinned man who can’t speak intelligibly tends not to go over very well. With a hearing person there to smile nicely and say in clear conversational English that Carlos is deaf and then to translate for him, he doesn’t have to nervously lip-read unsympathetic people, and it cuts down on unnecessary field sobriety tests.

Other than the close-mindedness of pricks in positions of power, Carlos doesn’t really mind not hearing except for the usual things, like music and being able to have a conversation while looking at something else. Kelly is used to the way he only knows what she’s saying when he looks away from the road, and entertains herself with whatever she can get on the radio. It’s nice when it’s just the two of them, because they have no reason to argue over the station, unlike when the whole team is together. He can’t even really guess at what she chooses, the vibration of the car as a whole swamping the small and indirect ones from the speakers. He glances over a few times and sees her bobbing her head and shimmying slightly at a fast tempo, so he has to assume some kind of dance pop is on, the sort of music that makes Ivan gag and flail around pretending to die of aesthetic horror when it comes on in the lab. Carlos knows he can’t really appreciate music without even memories of sound, but hip-hop is his favorite, because he can feel it the best.

Night Vale, despite its reputation for extreme strangeness, looks a lot like any other small town in the desert. Blocky public buildings with thick walls, and little houses with carports and shaded porches. It’s nice to see a desert community with only a few lawns. There has been little attempt to terraform this place, and there are fascinating, twisted cacti in the sandy yards. Unfortunately, the streets are twisted too, making strange and arcane shapes that make Carlos wonder about the possibility of getting clear satellite photos of the place to see just which ones they are. It seems like forever under the pounding sun, but they finally find the lab building. It’s drab and non-descript and they’re not positive of the directions, but Ivan’s truck is parked in front of it. Ivan’s truck is a hideous shade of lime green, and is plastered with bumper stickers, among them, ‘Chemists Do It Periodically On Tables,’ so it’s pretty hard to mistake.

Carlos pulls in beside Ivan’s truck, parking and hopping up to open the trunk. They have a lot of equipment to haul out, and most of it is both expensive and heavy. Kelly drags herself out to help, and calls to Ivan as they clomp up the steps to the door. Ivan opens the door and grins, saying something to Kelly. Ivan only knows a couple signs and he mumbles too badly for Carlos to read more than one word in twenty from his lips, but he’s a friendly guy and understands that their communication difficulties are more his fault than Carlos’s. Kelly speaks and signs at the same time, and it’s just commonplaces about the drive, so Carlos busies himself with moving and setting up the equipment. The space is oddly shaped, but it seems like a good lab setup, and soon Carlos is humming to himself the way he does when he’s involved with something, just enjoying the work and the vibration in his head. He used to worry more about annoying hearing people but over the years several have assured him that his humming, while tuneless and strange, is very quiet and seldom a problem. 

Carlos is so happily absorbed that he jumps a bit when someone taps his shoulder. Hey, Aiko says, carefully shaping her words in the way Ivan can only manage sometimes. The rest of us are here now. 

Carlos nods, and signs a thank-you, something his whole team understands by now. He goes with her to join the others, Kelly, Ivan, Barry, Charles, Rhoda, and Haley. Everyone looks sun-blasted and disconcerted by Night Vale’s weirdness already, so Carlos signs them a pep talk about not being daunted that Kelly translates for him. Charles and Aiko would be able to follow it if Carlos went more slowly, but when he’s talking to all of them together it’s easier this way. He thinks it’s pretty good, if maybe a little formal, the way his English words usually end up being. Everyone looks a little calmer, anyway, and Carlos is able to give everyone their instructions on how to arrange things and what readings to take for the next few hours. That done, he gets Kelly to call the mayor and arrange a town meeting for that evening.


	2. Chapter 2

X likes Cecil’s show. Almost everyone does. He keeps people up to date on events (but not too up to date) and his clear civic pride and terror are as heartwarming as his enthusiasm. She works the night shift, and wakes up to Cecil as late afternoon is fading into sunset. She doesn’t always pay attention to him, but he’s always on. Today she lies in bed for a while, listening to the news as she reads the day’s report, which as always, has appeared under her pillow at some point in her sleep. She’s aware of the dog park and of the new arrivals in town before Cecil mentions them, and spends a lazy early evening drifting in and out of wakefulness, knowing she’ll have to actually get up sometime. When she finally stretches, sits up, and starts actually listening to Cecil again, he’s talking about a town meeting called by the scientists. As usual, he goes on a whole digression about the available baked goods because he is fat in spirit if nowhere else. This time it’s corn muffins, which X has personally never cared for no matter how they’re made.

“…She said the angels had taken her salt for a godly mission,” Cecil reports as X gets up and throws on a robe, “and she hadn’t yet gotten around to buying more. Carlos took the podium along with one of his assistants, a beautiful but not nearly as perfect woman with blue hair. It’s maybe a little young for her, but I think it works. It’s just the right shade for her skin. Anyway, she told us that we are by far the most scientifically interesting community in the U.S., and that they had come to study just what is going on around here.” X snorts at Cecil’s fashion opinions, because he’s always been a strange old queen, even for Night Vale. She turns the volume up and heads into the kitchen as Cecil says, “Carlos grinned, and everything about him was perfect. And I fell in love _instantly_. Government agents from a vague, yet menacing, agency, were in the back, watching.” Cecil’s voice slows, and lowers, becoming portentous. Or is that ‘pretentious?’ They’re definitely closely related, especially in Cecil’s idiom. X cracks two eggs into a pan, smiling down at the cheerful purple yolks.

“I fear for Carlos.” Cecil says, as the eggs begin to sizzle and X puts down two slices of toast. “I fear for Night Vale. I fear for anyone caught between—Wait.” Cecil gasps. “What’s this? Sign language?” His voice rises to a shocked yelp. “Perfect Carlos is deaf!” There’s a brief silence, and then a deep, quiet groan of abject misery. “Beyond my reach!” Cecil moans, sounding devastated, even on the verge of tears. “O, curse the limitations of radio! Listener, what has a radio host to offer _but_ his voice? Am I not a presence of sound as much as flesh?” There’s a long silence in which X saves the eggs from burning, and then Cecil sighs. “Well, I suppose it’s not _all_ I have to offer. I’m very loyal, and I mix amazing drinks. This may not be totally hopeless after all.” He sounds a bit happier now, and X is glad to hear it. 

Cecil clears his throat, and then speaks again, in his professional voice. “We received a Press release this morning…” X tunes him out after that, taking her plate to the kitchen table and devouring her breakfast. She knows all about every press release before it gets released, after all. By the time she’s done washing the dishes, it’s nearly time for her shift, and she gets dressed before leaving by the secret passage. It’s one of those days when she has to fiddle with her balaclava to get the eyeholes to line up, and she’s still blinking as she emerges into the lowering light of evening. She stops and whistles, and a bicycle rolls up to her. It’s ghostly white from handlebars to spokes, and wiggles slightly with excitement. It’s new, and she gives it a friendly pat before climbing on and whispering her destination into one of the handlebars, hanging on as the bike bolts off in its excitement. 

X may be better at pretending to be calm, but she is also excited to be assigned to their newest resident. After all, everyone else is so familiar. The same families, the same crimes, the same old arguments and plans and dreams. Carlos is completely new, and she’s looking forward to observing his lab, even if nothing is going on there. Other officers will be watching Carlos and his team, of course, but she has the evening shift inside the lab. She stops the bike under the window and climbs off, patting it between the handlebars and giving it a playing card, watching for a moment as the card crunches into nonexistence in the general region of the head tube. It’s an ace of spades, the favorite of almost every ghost bike. This one is no exception, nuzzling gratefully against X’s leg for a moment before rolling off to resume patrol. She smiles, and crawls in through the window, carefully shutting it behind her and fading into invisibility against the wall as Rhoda and Haley come in. The day shift hadn’t been able to report much, but of course of X knows both names and has physical descriptions to match.


	3. Chapter 3

Rhoda grabs wrapped sandwiches and drinks for herself and Haley out of the communal fridge (quite possibly their most important piece of lab equipment) and heads back out to the truck. It’s one of four, counting Ivan’s, and she can only hope they don’t fuck them up because she has the feeling that getting parts in this Twilight Zone of a town is going to be a nightmare if it isn’t actually impossible. She settles in the driver’s seat and arranges the provisions as Haley comes out with a box of files to cram into the rear of the cab for Charles’s later use. It’s cool, being on such a diverse team. Charles is their botanist, and she doesn’t envy him the task of making sense of all the area’s _bizarre_ fucking cacti.

Once they’re fully loaded and headed to the monitoring station off Route 800, Rhoda flips the radio on. All of them have noticed the strangeness of Night Vale Community Radio already, and since they’re only here due to a fascination with the inexplicable, they can’t seem to stop listening to it. Now they learn that Night Vale has a boardwalk overlooking sagebrush and rocks. Somehow, Rhoda isn’t all that surprised. The NRA being as weird as anything else around here is a bit of a shock, though.

“Do you think maybe the whole thing is some kind of prank?” Haley asks as they near their destination.

“We’ll have to try ordering a bumper sticker,” Rhoda mutters, concentrating on turning off onto the right dirt track. The ground is a pallid grey-white that makes her think of cemeteries, and there is no real word for the color of the light emanating from the void overhead. The station itself is a reassuringly squat and ugly concrete building, but what they find on the seismometers inside is anything but reassuring. It would be easy to write off as a malfunction, but what are the odds on this many broken seismometers being wrong in the exact same way? They check everything again and again, and then they have to just sit down and breathe, wild-eyed. After a minute or two, Rhoda recovers enough to get up and make them each a cup of coffee. This is a job for liquor, but they have foolishly discarded the old habit of always bringing whiskey on scientific expeditions. Haley looks like she’s thinking the same thing, her little face deathly pale.

“Here.” Rhoda hands Haley a paper cup of sweet black coffee.

“Thanks.” She takes a sip, and Rhoda does the same, sitting down beside her. The silence spins out and out, because they still can’t wrap their minds around their findings.

“Man,” Haley says at last. “What do you think it means?”

“I have no idea.”

There’s more quiet after that, and it gets to be too much. Haley bounces up and turns on the radio. It’s the voice of the same strange announcer, and Haley turns it up, because he’s reporting on her teammates. They’re both curious about what the others are doing at the Desert Creek housing development.

“’It seems like it exists,’ signed Carlos and his perfect hair, Kelly (the blue-haired woman, listener) translating for his graceful and intricate gestures.”

“Is it just me, or does this guy have a major crush on Carlos?” Haley mutters.

“He does sign real pretty, though,” Rhoda says, and giggles hysterically.

“‘It seems like it’s just right there when you look at it.’” The announcer relates, “’And it’s between two other identical houses, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not.’ But, he says, they have done experiments and the house is definitely not there.” 

“Yeah, just like the earthquakes we’re measuring but not having.” Rhoda pulls out her phone, working on a text to Carlos.

“At news time, the scientists are standing in a group on the sidewalk in front of the nonexistent house, daring each other to go knock on the door.”

Haley rolls her eyes. "Boys."

“And Aiko.” Rhoda sends the text, hoping she’s getting her point across.

“And Aiko,” Haley agrees. Their physicist is completely out of her mind and Rhoda is honestly surprised that there’s no report of her taking that dare. Instead there’s a horrific bulletin about the post office, and an explanation for that asshole in the chicken feather headdress who had been standing around waving a rubber turtle over the trucks until Rhoda had shooed him away.

“’Indian magicks.’ What an asshole,” Rhoda mutters.

Haley makes a note of the lights above Arby’s for Aiko and Ivan, both of whom are into that kind of thing. And for Carlos, who is into everything. And really _does_ have perfect hair, even if it’s weird for a radio announcer to say so.

Mercifully, they don’t get much more time to sit marinating in weirdness before Carlos and Kelly arrive. They check the seismometers too, and finally Kelly calls the radio station, because it’s all any of them can think of. They sit there and listen as the announcer relates the information along with advice to commit insurance fraud. Kelly translates for Carlos, who looks dubious and also slightly offended. Still, at least the news has gotten out. Kelly gets a call from Aiko and passes her phone to Rhoda so she can keep signing for Carlos.

“Hey, Kelly?”

“She’s translating, this is Rhoda. What’s up?” 

Aiko tells her what’s up, and they load up to drive back to the lab and look at this clock of hers, listening with growing alarm to reports of ghost cars and strange lights in the sky.


	4. Chapter 4

Cecil puts on the weather and sighs, pushing back from his desk. It’s strange, how an utterly unremarkable day can change one’s life forever. He closes his eyes, picturing Carlos’s perfection again. The desire to run his fingers through that glossy black hair shivers over his entire skin, and he says, “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Cecil,” too inured to narration to stop now. “Let’s see, here…” He flexes his fingers a few times, shakes them out, and signs, _Hi, my name is Cecil._

At least he has a namesign, souvenier of his time as a counselor at the All-Desert Deaf Youth Camp. It’s a C, of course, tapped to his heart and then his forehead in reference to his clairvoyance as the Voice of Night Vale, and his blood bond to the town. Of course, Cecil doesn’t remember everything. He has a knack for languages, but his Spanish sees much more use than this ASL. _Your hair is perfect,_ Cecil signs, and giggles.

The Sheriff’s Secret Police keep him posted, so he has Kelly’s number, given as the main contact for the group. Cecil just has time to call her and see if there’s any more science to report on after the weather, and blushes as he presses the call button.

“Kelly here, and so’s Carlos if you have something to say to him.”

“Hi, Kelly. This is Cecil, with Night Vale Community Radio. I have a break during the weather, and was wondering if you had any further findings for me to tell my listeners about.”

“Well…” Kelly says, and then laughs softly. “Carlos is very excited about it and wants to tell you himself. Hang up so he can text you back?”

“Of course! Thank you very much,” Cecil says, and hangs up, trying to pretend that his hands aren’t sweating. It seems like a lifetime before his phone buzzes, and there it is, Carlos’s number and his description of their findings.

_Cecil: Sun set late today. Checked clocks. Lots of clocks._

“Huh. That’s interesting.” Cecil texts back, _Any idea why?_

Carlos has no explanation and frankly admits as much, which is utterly charming. Cecil thanks him and reluctantly disconnects. He still has a moment before the weather ends, and he indulges himself, closing his physical eyes and letting his astral gaze drift over the laboratory. The whole team is lovely, even if no one can possibly compare to Carlos. They sit around one of the black-topped work benches, staring at a little desk clock like Magi around a newborn god. One of the ones that starts out cute, like the Queen of Shadows or something. Kelly sits beside Carlos, blue hair tousled and bright against her brown skin. She’s lighter than Carlos, and the two of them shade down to Rhoda, who is a lovely deep black and sits tall and dignified as she contemplates the clock. Aiko and Haley are tiny and pale, particularly next to Rhoda, and Aiko is gently poking the clock with a glass stirring rod as Ivan, their enormous Viking-looking chemist, makes feeble efforts to get it back. Charles and Barry are quiet, sitting at one end of the table. They lean on each other, silent and exhausted.

Cecil is fascinated by all of them, but he keeps looking back to Carlos, his dark eyes so focused behind his glasses. Cecil keeps thinking that he has deceived himself somehow, but every time he sees Carlos again it’s the same shock of desperate infatuation. He forces himself to blink away, and then feels like his heart is wobbling in his chest when Intern Dana tells him that Carlos is here, that Carlos has moved his beautiful and perfect form through space and time to intersect with Cecil’s existence. Cecil’s hands fly up to smooth his hair and straighten his tie as he tells Dana to send Carlos in. And then the vision is there, blinking at him from the doorway, some heavy piece of scientific equipment distorting the lines of his crisp white lab coat but not making him look any less fantastic.

 _Hi, Carlos,_ Cecil signs, feeling nervous and jangly and elated. _I’m Cecil._

 _Hello, Cecil._ Just watching those gorgeous hands form his name is almost enough to make Cecil swoon.

 _Can you stay for an interview?_ Cecil asks.

 _No. Thank you. I’m scanning for_ and here is something Cecil can’t parse and then _materials._

 _Please,_ Cecil says, _go ahead._

Carlos does go ahead, endearingly earnest as he thrusts his little box at various objects, looking more and more alarmed as it whistles and beeps in time to its flashing indicator lights. It comes to a crescendo when he scans the microphone, and nervousness turns to dismay. _Out. All of you out now. Evacuate._ His hands are trembling a little, but his signs are still beautiful. Of course Cecil won’t do something so silly, but Carlos looks so appealing as he flees that Cecil really almost wants to. Just to make him feel better.

Cecil waits for the last few notes of the weather and takes a deep breath before switching the mic back on. “Welcome back, listeners,” he says, and goes on to inform them of the sun’s delinquent tendencies and the conduct of the scientists, as well as their general lack of answers. “Still,” he says, “we must be grateful to have the sun at all.” He goes on to remind his audience of the real importance of the sun, of the hierarchy of angels, and the dangers of alligators, before sharing his opinion on the best way to die, and reporting the existence of the underground city.


	5. Chapter 5

Carlos honestly has no idea until Kelly sits him down and tells him that Cecil has declared himself in love with Carlos on-air for everyone to hear. As always when it comes to radio, Carlos pictures signing hands on giant screens all over the city. Cecil's hands this time, long and white and strangely lovely. They're one of the only memorable physical things about the man, now that Carlos is away from him, along with a vibrant purple necktie adorned with a single, staring eye in gold. Carlos frowns, eyes glazing over and no longer seeing Kelly's agile fingers as he wonders just why he can't remember what Cecil looks like. Being Deaf, Carlos takes in a lot of visual information, and remembers all kinds of little details about people. He always notices when women get their hair cut, and so do his straight Deaf friends, taking out the other major variable. Not that Carlos is really that kind of gay, but still...

Kelly waves a hand in front of his eyes, and Carlos blinks. _Sorry. I was wondering if Cecil has some kind of quantum effect, because I can't remember what he looks like._

_That's weird. We'll have to get some controls and check._

That's what he likes about Kelly. Even more than most scientists, she's interested in things. They begin constructing an experiment, but have to leave it well before the full hypothesis is even fully formulated, because it's getting late. 

Carlos can't help a little trepidation at the thought of trying to sleep in Night Vale. Usually he doesn't worry. He doesn't suffer from insomnia and being Deaf means that even if a garbage truck backs up under his open window, he doesn't notice. Here in Night Vale, though, he gets the sense that the available disturbances are either much more intimate or much more apocalyptic.

Still, there isn't much that's _very_ alarming about his apartment. There's a circle of red-black stones and what seem like old bloodstains on the living room floor, but nothing is moving that should be still, and there's an odd but not unpleasant smell in the air, like smoke and lavender. The handprints on the ten-foot ceiling are more worrisome, but Carlos is tired enough that he can tell himself that he's imagining them. The apartment has a clock radio, and Carlos unplugs it and sticks it in an empty drawer, bringing his own clock out of his suitcase. 

Carlos has always done best with a combination of light and vibration, and has made several improvements to the system he bought years ago. Now the shaker that goes under his pillow is activated remotely, which means he doesn't get tangled in the cord while fumbling for the snooze button anymore. The factory-installed light had been bright enough, but the flashing pattern had made Carlos nervous, so he had changed it to be steady and green, because Carlos likes green. He strokes the squat and ugly little unit like a living creature, and sets it well back on his bedside table, so there's room for a glass of water and his tablet so he can can watch something to help him get back to sleep if he wakes up in the middle of the night. All this done, he has no choice but to go to bed, watching the cool desert moonlight crawling along the floor and up the wall.

When Carlos does fall asleep, he slides into a deep and strange dream. He walks through a city made of bone, the dry wind full of sand. There's no one there and the emptiness is becoming more and more eerie. Carlos is sure that if he could hear there would be nothing to hear, just as there is almost nothing to see. He shivers and keeps walking as time compresses and stretches out at the same time, a thousand years within a minute, a screaming, stretching, mobius strip feeling that changes nothing physical. Carlos is suddenly and deeply aware of his heart, of the fact that the universe as he knows it, the fact of his knowing things at all, depends so utterly on a fist-sized wad of constantly twitching muscle. He hauls in hard, deep breaths, and each one feels like a tremendous effort, and Carlos is crushed by the weight of being alive in an inanimate universe.

And then it stops. Or rather, nothing stops. Carlo's lungs continue to inflate and deflate according to plan, and his heart keeps beating, but the tremendous, soul-shattering _difficulty_ of it all has receded into the bearable distance. In the dream Carlos weeps, and in the real world a single tear slips from his closed eye. Everything smells like ash and lavender and moonlight, and a shadow with one golden eye signs, _Everything will be all right, Carlos. Well, not everything, but your heart will continue to beat and your lungs to breathe, and for some of us, that is everything._

Carlos lets the shadow pull him into its heart, which is the deepest and most soothing of darkness. Carlos sinks into the comfort of it, the warm and liquid blackness that slowly turns into the vastness of space. Floating between stars, Carlos looks for a constellation, planet, or nebula that he can recognize, but nothing is familiar, and he knows with the knowledge of dreams that he is in strange waters, some alien place no one has ever even seen with a telescope. He starts to fall toward a particular star, but he isn't afraid. He lets it pull him into is blinding light until it turns into the green glare of his alarm, vibration thrumming up through his head from below the pillow.

**Author's Note:**

> Hearing author who doesn't even sign writing Deaf, so please let me know if you see me screwing up.


End file.
